Sustainability success can't hide woes
Milk processor Synlait claims that despite a poor financial result, it delivered several sustainability successes in the last financial year.
The end of winter means Dung Beetle Innovations' (DBI) rearing facilities are coming to life.
Stock will be in anything but short supply as DBI beetles become available in either whole farm packages or as individual colonies in farm starter or lifestyle packages.
The beetles are so popular; DBI are expanding their rearing facilities. By the end of 2016, they will have expanded into a further 1000 square meter hothouse facility utilising more than 175 bins.
Dr Shaun A. Forgie, co-founder of DBI, says, "The process of dung recycling is part of an age-old natural process that livestock animals and dung beetles co-evolved together in. You import the livestock and not the beetles and the natural cycle is broken resulting in an accumulation of un-utilised dung sitting around on the pasture surface,"
"The rapid burial of fresh dung will help alleviate many issues stemming from current intensive farming practices including water quality." he says.
Forgie also adds that we cannot rely on our own native dung beetle fauna as they are specific to our native habitat, not pastoral ones.
"Dung beetles are a cost effective, low maintenance, option in significantly helping long term sustainability of livestock farming." says Forgie.
Once established, dung beetles are self-sustaining and their population will sit proportional to the dung available.
"They will help save the farmer dollars with a reduced reliance on solid fertilizer inputs and drenches over the long term, with dung beetles playing an important and significant role in adding nutrient rich dung into the soil horizon and reducing survivorship and reinfection rates of parasitic gut nematodes."
Rural trader PGG Wrightson has revised its operating earnings guidance, saying trading conditions have deteriorated since the last market update in February.
It's been a bumper season for maize and other supplements in the eastern Bay of Plenty.
Leading farmers from around New Zealand connected to share environmental stories and inspiration and build relationships at the Dairy Environment Leaders (DEL) national forum in Wellington last month.
AgriZeroNZ, a joint venture fast-tracking emissions reduction tools for farmers, is pouring $5 million in a biotech company to develop a low emissions farm pasture with increased productivity gains.
Fonterra is teaming up with wealth app provider Sharesies to make it easier for its farmer shareholders to trade co-op shares among themselves.
Te Awamutu dairy farmers Doug, Penny, Josh and Bayley Storey have planted more than 25,000 native trees on the family farm, adding to a generations-old native forest.